Holiday Decorating Inspiration

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Coastal Living

Paperwhites, a yearly favorite. We purchase at least 100 bulbs and pot some up every week or so for blooms right until the end of January.  Orchids, amarylis, and hydrangeas too. Flowers and greenery is so much easier then having to dust and pack up even more decorations.

Home Goods

Shells, of course.

Home Goods

Better Homes and Gardens

Better Homes and Gardens

Coastal Living

Coastal Living

Coastal Living

This photo appeared on the cover of the December, 2005 issue; so pretty.

Easy Fabric Flower Rosettes - Recycle your sewing disasters

If you have a fabric stash of abandoned projects, complete disasters and just plain left overs that are on their way to reaching epic proportions then this easy tutorial by Jennifer Paganelli of Sis Boom will have you giving them a makeover in no time.

I was looking for something different to do with my pile of fabric in need of some do over's and found this really easy PDF file tutorial for frayed fabric rosettes that you can download. 

I tried making some rosettes with this lovely pale pink linen and some white sateen cotton. 

Some I turned into little pins.

Didn't these dress up a recycled plain brown bag nicely? 

Try some yourself.  You will be hooked in no time!  I'm off to try some other fabrics and maybe some ribbon.

Technorati Tags: fabric flowers,scrap fabric ideas

Raising Olives apron giveaway by Sasha Sews

I've seen lots of blog giveaways usually after they have ended of course.  Thinking it may be a good idea for my blog I went in search of a how to and discovered Tip Junkies giveaway list and found this wonderful apron giveaway on Raising Olives.   Isn't this lovely? 

Reversible too.

To enter visit Raising Olive's Blog in the comment section write which fabric you like best from Sasha Sew's Etsy Shop and what your favorite Thanksgiving food is.   How simple is that? For additional entries tweet or blog about the giveaway with the link back to Raising Olive's post like I'm doing here. 

I picked this fabric called Garden Maze. How perky would this be on a gray snowy day?

Hurry entries end Wednesday, Novemember 18th, 2009

Beach House Living signs up with Etsy

Beach House Living, meaning me took the plunge and signed up with Etsy. The handmade gift tags I had been making for our online store Beach and Bauble and using at fairs for the last two years received some nice compliments.  It must be our, I mean everyone's favorite colors of white, aqua, teal, turquoise, khaki, navy and powder blue. 

So I thought I would try listing some on  Etsy without our store name of course.   

Beach and Bauble's signature gift tags minus our name.

Then I thought; well that might be a little boring and came up with these.

 Casual beach theme wedding or beach party?

Why not put up the jewelry on Etsy while I was at it. I mainly use sterling, crystal, glass, freshwater pearls and vintage findings. Lately, a few pieces have been silver plated, silver tone, gold plated and gold tone. I will be listing some of these over the next few days.

Here's a sneak peek.

And another peek... love this color

Some of the gift tags are listed.  We hope you will drop by our Etsy and let us know what you think.  A heart or two would be great...A little encouragement is a good thing, isn't it?   Next up the pillows, accessories and heaven only knows what! Stay tuned.

Gift tags, Handcrafted, Jewelry

Technorati Tags: Etsy

Custom rubber stamps by Terbearco

If you want or need a unique rubber stamp for your handmade works, scrapbooking, company catalogs or you simply like decorating your mail look no further then Terbearco's Etsy shop.  Be warned they have so many offerings it may be difficult to choose just one, which is exactly what happened to yours/us truly.

I like mermaids so this one was a must have.  This was just a quick test stamp done at the kitchen counter so please keep that in mind...it looks much better in person. 

Originally we selected four designs.  By the time we contacted Terbearco's shop we had six, and added yet two more at the last minute.  Proofs arrived for our custom stamps in about two days.  We saw the notice the stamps would take three weeks but, we got them in a week along with a surprise gift of extra little stamps. Our mail will be a stand out now!

The custom stamps were mounted on a pretty thick block or you can insert the handle.  There is also a place to write what stamp your working with on the block or in this case so I don't stamp upside down.

Terbearco helped us narrow down a font and size for this "Regatta Bags" stamp which has been a venture in the works for some time.

Just so you know we didn't get paid or anything else to refer Terbearco's Etsy shop nor were we asked to write a post on our blog.  We are happy with our stamps; the service was great and thought we would pass the word around.

Trying out new looks

We decided to try out a few new looks...what do you think of the new header photo?  The old one is below.

Beach stones and driftwood

We roamed the beach yesterday after the stormy weather hoping to find some beach glass. 

We  found this small jelly fish which of course we left there and nice white stones which will be good for vase fillers, picture frames or some other project. Any other ideas out there?

These large pieces of driftwood were found at the inlet. We didn't have any project in mind for them thank goodness; they would not have fit in the trunk.  Isn't the texture interesting?